RECORDATION REPORT FORMER STREET RAILWAY CAR SHED BUILDING PSE&G SUBSTATION 33-35 VAN HOUTEN STREET CITY OF PATERSON PASSAIC COUNTY, NEW JERSEY April 10, 2019 Emily T. Cooperman, M.S., Ph.D., and Matthew S. Tomaso, M.A., RPA Principal Investigators Prepared for: PUBLIC SERVICE ELECTRIC & GAS COMPANY 4000 Hadley Road South Plainfield, NJ 07080 Prepared by: 67B Mountain Boulevard Extension P.O. Box 4039 Warren, NJ 07059 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 2-1 1.1 Personnel, Authorship and Acknowledgements ........................................................ 2-1 2.0 HISTORIC CONTEXTS .................................................................................................... 2-1 2.1 Horsecars in Paterson ................................................................................................. 2-1 2.2 Garret Hobart, the Paterson Railway Company, and the Introduction of the Trolley 2-2 2.3 The Public Service Corporation ................................................................................. 2-3 3.0 SITE-SPECIFIC HISTORY BEFORE THE PRESENT BUILDING................................ 3-1 3.1 Development before 1864, and the Construction and Use of the “Wigwam” ........... 3-1 3.2 1870s to 1902 ............................................................................................................. 3-2 3.3 1902: The Great Fire .................................................................................................. 3-3 4.0 HISTORY OF THE STREET RAILWAY CAR SHED BUILDING ................................ 4-1 4.1 Construction and Original Configuration – ca. 1903-1920s ...................................... 4-1 4.2 Changes to the Property, 1920s to the Present ........................................................... 4-2 5.0 SITE SIGNIFICANCE ....................................................................................................... 5-1 6.0 SOURCES........................................................................................................................... 6-1 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Aerial Locator Map Figure 2-1: Paterson Horsecar, 1875 Figure 2-2: 1890s Images Figure 3-1: 1828 Freeman Map Figure 3-2: 1877 Hyde Map Figure 3-3: Street Railway Storage and Repair Facility Figure 3-4: 1884 Robinson Map Figure 3-5: 1887 Sanborn Map (north of Broadway) Figure 3-6: 1887 Sanborn Map (south of Broadway) Figure 3-7: 1899 Robinson Map Figure 3-8: 1899 Sanborn Map (south of Broadway) Figure 3-9: 1899 Sanborn Map (north of Broadway) Figure 3-10: 1902 Robinson Map Figure 4-1: 1915 Sanborn Map Figure 4-2: 1915 Mueller Map Figure 4-3: 1915 Sanborn Map Corrected 1931 i \\psands.aec\ProjectData\Projects\01315\0604\Reports\N-Envir\CRM\Phase_III_Other\Draft Text\PSE&G Paterson Trolley shed recordation revised Paterson review.docx LIST OF PLATES Plate 4-1: Shed Building, looking southwest from New Jersey Transit station at east elevation Plate 4-2: Shed building, west elevation, looking northeast Plate 4-3: Central section, east wall, Shed Building, looking east Plate 4-4: Interior, Shed Building, looking southwest toward south and west walls Plate 4-5: North elevation, Shed Building, looking southwest Plate 4-6: South elevation, Shed Building, looking northwest Plate 4-7: Shed Building interior, looking southeast at east and south walls, showing plywood panels in ceiling. Plate 4-8: Detail, north elevation, Shed Building, showing roof truss Plate 4-9: Shed Building interior, northwest toward north wall, showing ceiling Plate 4-10: Shed Building east wall, looking southwest, showing infilled windows Plate 4-11: Detail, east wall, Shed Building, showing stone window sill Plate 4-12: Southwest corner, Shed Building interior, looking southwest Plate 4-13: West wall interior, Shed Building, showing infilled north opening Plate 4-14: West wall exterior, Shed Building, looking northeast ii \\psands.aec\ProjectData\Projects\01315\0604\Reports\N-Envir\CRM\Phase_III_Other\Draft Text\PSE&G Paterson Trolley shed recordation revised Paterson review.docx 1.0 INTRODUCTION This report provides information on the configuration and history of the former street railway (trolley) car shed on the property of the PSE&G Paterson Substation located at 33-35 Van Houten Street, Paterson, New Jersey (Figure 1-1). This building will be removed as part of planned upgrades to the existing substation equipment in order to make way for installation of a new switchgear building. This report responds to a request for recordation on the part of the Paterson Historic Preservation Commission, who asked that the report and photographs be put on file in the Paterson Public Library Local History Room, the Paterson Museum, and in the archive of the Historic Preservation Commission. A related plaque that commemorates the history of the site of the former trolley car shed building is being prepared concurrently with this report. 1.1 Personnel, Authorship and Acknowledgements This recordation was performed by Emily T. Cooperman, M.S., Ph.D., and Matthew S. Tomaso, M.A., RPA. The authors visited the building on January 17, 2018. Dr. Cooperman also visited the site on March 5, 2019. She, Mr. Tomaso, Kristian Eshelman, and Kyle Toth conducted research for the project. The report was written by Dr. Cooperman and Mr. Tomaso and illustrated by the authors and Mr. Eshelman, as credited. Architectural drawings, prepared by Gregory Merton, with Ted Osborne, AIA, as Architect of Record, have been provided to the City of Paterson along with this report as part of the commemorative package concerning the subject building. The report may be cited as follows: Cooperman, Emily T., Matthew S. Tomaso, and Kristian Eshelman. 2019 Recordation of Street Railway (Trolley) Car Shed Building, PSE&G Paterson Substation, 33-35 Van Houten Street, City of Paterson. Prepared by PS&S for PSE&G. PS&S wishes to thank Gene Rotonda, Bernadette LaFond and Giorbis Bermudez (PSE&G) for their partnership in developing this project. We also appreciate the guidance and collaborative assistance of Gianfranco Archimede in helping us understand the City of Paterson’s needs and its history. 1-1 2.0 HISTORIC CONTEXTS 2.1 Horsecars in Paterson Horsecar lines were the main form of transportation within American cities from the second quarter of the 19th century through the 1880s at the earliest. The relatively lower fares in comparison to railroad lines allowed those who could not afford a horse and carriage of their own to travel farther from the center of growing industrial cities to houses in new suburban development areas. Horsecars were conventionally pulled by a two-horse team along rails laid in city streets and provided an affordable and reliable means for workers to commute to their place of employment (Figure 2-1). The ability to travel by horsecar was an important factor in generating development in the new, more suburban areas of growing American cities for middle-class residences. These had largely been previously unavailable to those who could not afford their own individual means of transportation. In contrast to some other American cities, Paterson’s first horsecar lines did not appear until after the Civil War. In 1868, both the Paterson & Haledon Horse Railroad Company and the Paterson & Passaic Horse Railroad Company were chartered. The first ran tracks from Main Street and Broadway northwest to Haledon and was owned primarily by the Passaic Water Company (Shriner 1890:82). The second line laid tracks from the New York, Lake Erie & Western Railroad Company depot essentially where the current New Jersey Transit Paterson railroad station is today at Railroad Avenue and Ward Street to Cedar Lawn Cemetery, with the objective of developing the area of this rural cemetery. These two companies were followed by the establishment of the Paterson & Little Falls Horse Railroad Company, which around 1870 also ran lines from Main Street and Broadway, and from the former New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railroad Company depot. The depot was located north of Market Street near what is now Memorial Drive. It was a common phenomenon for fortunes to be both made and lost in speculating on the construction of horsecar lines: although fares were low, the high volume of travelers more than made up for this factor in producing profits for investors. The early history of the finances of Paterson’s early horsecar lines was, however, particularly dramatic. One late- 19th-century account asserted that “it is extremely doubtful whether there is a city in the country in which more money has been spent on horse railroads than in Paterson,” adding that horsecar lines, created competitively and speculatively, and dependent on future construction, “were built long before the erection of houses in various parts of the city justified any such expenditure of money” (Shriner 1890:81-82). The heavily speculative nature of Paterson horsecar line development, led, not entirely unexpectedly, to financial failure: for example, the line to Cedar Lawn Cemetery Rail Company was run at a loss until it “succumbed to the panic of 1873” (Shriner 1890:81). 2-1 2.2 Garret Hobart, the Paterson Railway Company, and the Introduction of the Trolley All of Paterson’s horsecar lines were consolidated in 1888 under the leadership of Garret A. Hobart (1844-1899), who first came to Paterson in the 1860s to study law, and went on to become a specialist in railroad bankruptcy and in advising railroad